"Oh! it couldn't be him," said another; "for he was one of the party, and of course it wasn't he. If he hadn't been invited, he might have done it out of spite; but now he had no object."
Various were the conjectures and discussions at school and in the whole neighborhood.
The trial was on Tuesday, and Mr. Blair was the prosecuting attorney. The village apothecary testified that on the Friday previous Michael Hennessy purchased some poison of him, representing that his mother sent him for it to poison rats. A neighbor of Mr. Brown's alleged that he saw Michael passing his residence in the road on Saturday afternoon, and Joe Bundy averred that he saw him prowling around the farm buildings about the time indicated by the last witness.
Mrs. Hennessy testified that she sent Michael for the poison to kill the rats that infested their premises. Mr. Hennessy said he had mended a hand-reel for a person who lived just beyond Mr. Brown's, and sent Michael home with it on Saturday afternoon.
Mr. Blair accepted the evidence of the parents, and urged the probability that a portion of the poison had been reserved by the lad as an instrument of his spite against Mr. Brown, for the application of which the errand upon which he was dispatched furnished an opportunity.
He set forth every circumstance unfavorable to poor Michael in the strongest possible light, blending with his argument such reflections and assertions upon the character and training of the children of foreign parentage as could not fail to influence a prejudiced jury.
Notwithstanding an able defence, the jury, after a short consultation, returned a verdict of "guilty," and Michael was sentenced for twelve months to the reform-school.
Nothing could exceed the grief and indignation of his comrades, or the sympathy of the whole village with poor Mr. and Mrs. Hennessy. Michael stoutly protested his innocence, and there were but very few who doubted it; but his father, whose health was very poor and his family large, was not able to risk an appeal to a higher court, which would probably, after all, confirm the decision, and Mike was not willing to have him. So they prepared, with heavy hearts, for the separation.
"Indeed!" said Mrs. Sullivan to her neighbor Mrs. Mellen—"indeed, it's a sore thing to be put upon two such decent people, through the hatred of that miserable old Blair against an Irishman's boy, and him as innocent as the child in his mother's arms!"
"You knew them before they came here, I have heard," said Mrs. Mellen, who had not lived long in the place.